Lose Your Love Handles

The Secret To Shedding Love Handles

If you’re insulin resistant, on the other hand, you don’t deal well with carbs. And anything other than a low-carb diet pretty much means you’re going to be storing more fat overall, specifically in the love handles. If you’re insulin resistant and you still eat a lot of carbs, then your glucose clearance from the heavy carb load is going to be compromised and hormonal receptor sites in your love handles and lower back are going to be overloaded.

The good news is that insulin resistance (and the resulting cascade of regional fat) can be mitigated with certain types of diet and training.

Misconceptions

You can see in gyms across the world the rampant use of “site specific” spot training. This is a futile attempt to thrash the last bits of fat from the edges of your body and does little to help you understand why nothing has worked up to that point.

My friends, the time for side bends and ab-twister machines is over. In fact, it should never have ever begun.

The reality is that these “spot-reducing” exercises often carry an abysmal level of total-body taxation. That is, they are incredibly easy and contribute very little to improving your insulin sensitivity.

Sure, you may drop a bead of sweat and cringe at the burn through your midsection, but the reality is you are probably wasting your time.

Big, dynamic multi-joint movements strung together in a specific way will provide the results you crave and rid you of those horrible handles of love. By doing this, we play into the power that hormones have on the body and use them as weapons.

One hormone in particular plays a major role.

Insulin Resistance vs. IGF-1

Insulin resistance can be combated very nicely by a hormone called IGF-1, or insulin-like growth factor 1.

Producing extra IGF-1 through training will help you improve your insulin sensitivity and rid yourself of love handles and lower back fat.

We know that insulin resistance is very common, particularly in people who were previously overweight. So, if you have lost some fat and you’re now struggling to lose a bit more (and that fat happens to be in your love handles), I’m willing to bet you’re suffering from some degree of insulin resistance and an inability to efficiently clear glucose from your system.

In order to get rid of that fat, you need to do fat-burning workouts (obviously) and increase your insulin sensitivity to the greatest degree that you can. As a result, you need to employ metabolic resistant training (MRT).

MRT is the overarching theory that dictates how I design fat-loss training programs; it consists of using fast-paced, multi-joint movements to train the body to move more efficiently.

Because this style of training is extremely expensive in terms of energy (caloric) demand, MRT is excellent as a general fat-loss modality. However, perhaps more important is the fact that it's also an incredible way to produce IGF-1.